


i love you.

by findaplacetoloseit



Category: The Shannara Chronicles (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-29
Updated: 2016-08-29
Packaged: 2018-08-11 18:51:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7903780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/findaplacetoloseit/pseuds/findaplacetoloseit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which they're lovestruck idiots (high school/university au, you choose) and nothing hurts. Alternatively, a fluffy little oneshot where Amberle and Eretria tell each other those three little words.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i love you.

"No, stop!" Amberle laughed, squirming helplessly beneath her girlfriend's roaming hands. "You win," she gasped out between breaths, "Get off of me, you goddamn-"

Eretria cut her off with a swift kiss.

"You know you love it," The other girl murmured against her lips, an infuriating, devilish smirk plastered all over her face; and Amberle did love it, damnit. She loved _her._

With an involuntary, giggling snarl, she lunged up at Eretria- but somehow, the girl managed to catch her wrists, pinning them to the duvet above her head.

"Nope," Eretria told her cheerily, "No fighting back. Resistance is futile."

She dropped her weight onto Amberle, their curves fitting easily together, pressing Amberle into the soft, yielding surface of the bed. Just like that, she was held hostage. (Ugh, whoever had thought it was a good idea to introduce Eretria to wrestling classes?) Amberle let out a weak yelp of indignation, bucking defiantly up against the shorter girl with her hips, but Eretria held her down, tongue caught between her teeth in wicked glee.

"Admit it." Eretria sang.

"No!"

"Admit it."

"Make me!" Amberle blurted.

Her girlfriend raised an eyebrow at the brazen invitation. _Damn it,_ Amberle thought, _how could she manage to look challenging_ and _seductive at the same time? It's not fair._

"Well..." Eretria drawled through a smile, "I can think of plenty ways to do that, sweetheart."

Amberle tried (and failed) to ignore the rush of blood to her cheeks. She knew the other girl could see the flushed tint to her face, but rolled her eyes in feigned confidence anyway.

(After all, Eretria was a sucker for a challenge.)

"Do your worst, Rover." She eventually replied, heart leaping to her throat.

Eretria grinned suddenly- a sharp, dangerous, wolflike grin that made trepidation swell in Amberle's stomach.

The clenched hands on her wrists loosened, and released.

 _Oh,_ Amberle thought,  _she's going to tickle me again, oh crap-_

Then, before Amberle knew what was happening, her girlfriend was lurching into her like the two of them were opposite magnetic forces- drawn inevitably toward each other by the laws of atomic attraction- and her mouth was on hers, and fingers were tangling in her hair, and Amberle could only curl her hands helplessly into the fabric of Eretria's hoodie as the two of them kissed with all the force of a train collision.

And all Amberle could think was _Eretria, Eretria, Eretria,_ because nothing existed except Eretria's name and Eretria's body on hers and the taste of Eretria on her lips, earnest and wonderful and world-consuming.

(It lasted for what seemed like an eternity.)

When they finally drew apart, Amberle gazed dazedly into her girlfriend's eyes. Her hands were still clenched in the fabric of Eretria's hoodie; like she might disappear, if Amberle didn't hold tight enough.

Eretria was flushed and dishevelled, hair and clothes askew, but somehow the girl managed to compose herself enough to ask,

"So, how was my worst?"

"Huh?" All the thoughts seemed to have flown entirely out of Amberle's head.

"Do- do you admit it yet?"

Amberle blinked up at her, dizzy and confused and in love.

Without warning, as if driven by some unseen force, she strained upward to kiss Eretria again. Her stomach lurched, and she let out a small, throaty (and quite frankly, embarrassing) whine as the other girl kissed her back. Unlike their previous kiss, this one was softer, slower, and sweeter. If their previous kiss had been a train collision, this one was an exploration- reverent and careful and profound.

Amberle's hand reached up to curl around the back of Eretria's neck as they kissed, and gently, she coaxed her girlfriend down until the two lay entwined with each other; a messy, ridiculously soft mess of gangly teenage limbs and wild loose hair and connected lips.

"Admit it," Eretria murmured when they gently broke apart, burying her face into the crook of Amberle's neck. "Just admit it, Amberle."

"Don't you-" Amberle struggled to recapture her thoughts, because within close proximity of Eretria, she could never seem to think straight, "Don't you already know?"

Eretria paused at that. Amberle could practically hear the wheels turning in her head.

(Eretria had always been a loud thinker. For no reason in particular, Amberle loved that about her.)

(Honestly, what _didn't_ she love about the girl?)

"...I don't know." Eretria replied eventually, words muffled in the fabric of Amberle's shirt. Amberle's eyebrows shot up at the small, insecure confession. "I just...I don't- I need to..."

"Hear it out loud?" Amberle prompted.

Eretria nodded shyly against her chest.

"Please?" Eretria mumbled.

The plea echoed in Amberle's ears, little and plaintive and needy. She thought that if this moment were in a television show, there would be a sudden, anticipatory swell of music right about then, and the camera would focus sharply on the two of them. The film producers would operate a variety of complicated techniques to block out the rest of the universe, and perhaps even freeze the frame to give the illusion of time itself holding its breath for the momentous scene-

-but Amberle could still hear the light pitter-patter of the rain on the roof, and the distant ticking of a clock in the other room, and the thin, wailing cries of the evening birds outside her window. The leaves rustled distantly in the wind, and far above their heads, past the thin ceiling and corrugated iron roof of Amberle's house, the clouds ambled slowly along, letting raindrops fall gently from their dark underbellies.There was no dramatic music, and no freezeframe. The passing seconds refused to hang suspended in the air.

The rest of the universe would not disappear for the sake of the two of them.

And in that moment, surrounded by sky and earth and reality and the sound of rain on the roof, Amberle felt as if she were something of incredibly small proportions, dwarfed by an infinitesimally vast world; and the perfectly imperfect creature nosing into the crook of her neck was oh-so tiny and insignificant compared to every other existing thing in the world's entirety; but the way Amberle's heartbeat pounded in her chest, irrational and contradictory and and terribly, wonderfully beautiful, demanded that what Amberle felt for that creature was perhaps the grandest thing she'd ever known, and perhaps ever know.

"I love you," Amberle breathed.

The clock ticked on in the background.

The leaves rustled quietly outside.

And Eretria

didn't

move.

"I said," Amberle repeated, slightly bolder, "I _love_ you."

For a long moment, there was silence between the two of them. Amberle's heart rate accelerated.

The breath stuck fearfully in her throat.

The clock ticked on.

 _What if,_ her thoughts chanted, _what if what if what if-_

And Eretria raised herself up on her forearms to look down at her, and Amberle realised, with a sickening twist in the pit of her stomach, that she was _crying._

"Hey, I'm sorry," Amberle began, distressed. She reached up to cradle her girlfriend's tear-streaked face in her hands, feeling a sudden, horrible rush of regret. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to-"

 _"No."_ Eretria scowled shakily through her tears. "Don't you _ever_ be sorry for that."

Amberle blinked.

(The clock ticked on, and on, and on.)

(The ticking seemed weirdly, infuriatingly steady, when compared to the erratic beating of Amberle's heart.)

"It's not- you didn't do anything wrong." Eretria sucked in a quivering breath, avoiding her gaze. "I'm stupid for crying, okay? I just- I didn't think you'd actually-"

"Hey," Amberle leaned up to press their foreheads together, forcing Eretria to look her directly in the eye. The wind outside let out a particularly loud whine, as if agreeing with her, when she said, "You're not stupid."

"I _am."_

"You're _not."_

Eretria's eyes glittered with tears, tears sharp and beautiful as shattered diamonds- and still, like always, those eyes looked at her like she was the only thing in the world worth looking at.

Amberle sighed.

"Crying isn't stupid, okay?" Amberle nudged their noses together, hoping to reassure her. "You're allowed to cry. It doesn't make you lose any intelligence, as far as I know, and it definitely doesn't make me love you any less."

Eretria swallowed, leaning into her touch. Amberle smiled at her, soft and unassuming and so, so utterly lovestruck.

"I'll never judge you, and I'll never think less of you for your feelings, Eretria. You can be anything you want to be around me, okay?"

"Even weak?" Eretria's voice was uncharacteristically small.

 _Unconditional love,_ Eretria had once told her, _does not exist._

"Yep. I'll be weak with you." 

_Amberle had argued with her for hours on end about that- because **of course** unconditional love exists. She'd seen it before. There was living proof in the eyes of children and parents and family and friends and lovers and everyone she'd ever come across, whether it was hidden or not; the entirety of humanity, all of whom had somehow managed and would somehow manage to find some version of the same type of love. It is the type of love that demands nothing and gives everything, the type of love that founds humanity's ability to trust and thrive amongst one another, the type of love that spans countries and worlds and even the realms of both life and death._

And a little, vulnerable smile curled at the corner of Eretria's lips, and Ambrle kissed it until it spread, relieved and bashful, across her face.

 _Yes,_ Amberle thought. _Unconditional love exists._

"I just...I honestly can't believe I _cried_ after you told me you love me." Eretria muttered against Amberle's lips some time later, her voice steadied somewhat. (Amberle's heart leapt, because she'd actually said the three words to her girlfriend, and how awesome was that?) "I mean, what kind of sappy, romantic bullshit-"

"That's you," Amberle murmured back. "Sappy and romantic." Eretria made a face. Amberle giggled, pulling Eretria even closer, if that was possible.

"Says you," Eretria grumbled.

"Me? Romantic?" Amberle grinned, gazing up into Eretria's eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Keep kidding yourself, princess."

Dissolving into laughter, Amberle pulled Eretria down with her (she loved that the other girl offered little to no resistance) and pressed kisses over everywhere she could reach- Eretria's cheeks, her eyelids, her nose, her hair, her chin, her lips.

"I love you," She told Eretria again as they fell asleep together on the couch that night, fingers skating slowly up and down the spine of the girl cuddled into her.

"I love you," She told Eretria the next day, watching her with adoring, sleep-soft eyes as the girl reached blearily upward for early-morning kisses.

"I love you," She told her a hundred times a day from there onward, through devoted whispers and whimpered pleas and happy yelps and shrieking cheers and a thousand passed notes in class.

"I love you," She told Eretria late one night, many, many nights after the first time-

-and in a rush of exhaled breath, Eretria said it back.

"I love you," Eretria told her. 

And yeah, Amberle cried. 

(Once, twice, three times Eretria said it back.)

(Four times, six times, ten times-

in mumbles and shouts and chuckles and whines and stuttered, nonsensical confessions-

until Amberle lost count.)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos much appreciated! :D


End file.
